Start-Up News: Early Reddit Employee Faces Up to 35 Years in Jail for Downloading 4.8 Million Journal Articles

AARON SWARTZ ARRESTED. “Shocking news: Moments ago former Demand Progress Executive Director Aaron Swartz was indicted by the US government,” Demand Progress’s David Segal said in an email blast yesterday. “As best as we can tell, he is being charged with allegedly downloading too many journal articles from the Web. The government contends that downloading so many journal articles constitutes felony computer hacking and should be punished with time in prison.” Mr. Swartz helped create RSS and whose company was once bought by Reddit. He faces up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines and pleaded not guilty. Eeepo. Why he wanted 4.8 million journal articles is beyond us. There is a petition for signing and you can donate here.

GROUPME ON THAT PHONE 7. Last week GroupMe released a preview–“meaning only a few features are available with more to come”–of its Windows Phone 7 app. “You may not hear a lot about the whole WP7 platform compared to others BUT fascinatingly it has become the second most common request to have from GroupMe users,” a PR rep writes. We were just talking to someone about how WP7 is kind of indie-cool now.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF DAILY DEAL INNOVATIONS. Everyone and their mom has a start-up and Juice in the City, the “Groupon for moms,” just launched the $3 million Groupmom Fund. WTF is that, you say. Crowdsourced merchant deal-making, that’s what. Instead of employing a salesforce, JITC is recruiting “a workforce of moms distributed across the country” that will “visit and sample the products and services of local merchants and then sets up deals with the businesses based on a positive experience.”

TOUT SNUGGLES UP TO LINKEDIN. Folks have been saying LinkedIn should buy this little New York start-up launched by Tawheed Kader. That hasn’t happened yet, but Tout just announced LinkedIn integration that “not only will allow you to access your LinkedIn connections from within Tout, but will also let you send personalized/templated messages to your LinkedIn connections right from Tout.”

MEDIA MEAT MARKET! VC and start-up scene personality Charlie O’Donnell is hosting a “Media Meet Startups” event “where we just put 50-100 companies in a room and threw about 50 reporters in the mix.” Companies participating include… Fab.com! Birchbox! GroupMe! FanBridge! Sonar.me! SinglePlatform! Fancy Hands! Gamechanger.io! At the Frying Pan on 26th St. for happy hour on Wednesday next week.

INSIDE BASEBALL. Also, Charlie O’Donnell, Josh Kushner, and Fred Wilsoninvested in a batch of tickets to Citifield to see the Mets play the San Diego Padres on August 9 and invited everyone! Tickets went fast and are now sold out. No doubt there will be plenty of pitching, har har.